The Deplorables' Hit List: ten recordings that go down well with American patriots (and I like some of them too)

Canadian commentator Gordon Sinclair's 1973 single started out as a radio broadcast - they just added...

Ain't it a shame - Fats Domino has left this Valley of Tears

I must have first heard a Fats Domino record when I was five or so, which means The Big Beat has kept me rocking in my seat (and on my feet, when nobody's looking) for the best part of 60 years...

Legendary British TV and music producer Jack Good and the Cary Grant film "Father Goose" - synchronicity strikes again!

I was watching Cary Grant and Leslie Caron in the WW2-set romcom Father Goose (1966) the other night in a fairly desultory fashion (it's an enjoyable film, but I've already seen it at least twice and it was past midnight). There are several scenes...

Take the "My Favourite Song Openings" quiz - a blast from the past

First warning: I first posted this four years ago. Second warning: If you want to test your knowledge of popular music (1953-1983), you should look away while the video is playing, because it includes a host of visual clues. The titles of the 31 songs can be found below:

Why am I repeating myself, I hear you ask? Because...

Fats Domino - ten rays of aural sunshine from a true rock 'n' roll giant

I gave a friend a Fats Domino greatest hits LP for his 20th birthday. I'd been bullying him into appreciating early rock 'n' roll (I was young and determined to spread the gospel). When he unwrapped it and studied the distinctly uncool, unthreatening-looking, fat little black man smiling benignly beside a piano on the cover, his disappointment was evident. "Just give it a listen," I suggested. I was relieved a week later when the birthday boy appeared at my door, raving about the album. (He might have been trying to spare my feelings, but that really would have been a first for him.) I've long ago stopped expecting anyone to share my popular culture enthusiasms, but I still suspect anyone who fails to react positively to The Fat Man's music of being  an anhedonic miserabilist. You don't have to respond to Elvis Presley, Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee Lewis, Gene Vincent or Carl Perkins - but if your system doesn't flood with endorphins the moment Fats Domino comes on the radio, it probably means you're a bad person. Not that I'm being judgmental or anything. If you've got Sky, and you've hooked it up to broadband, I strongly recommend visiting the Sky Arts catch-up section to download The Big Beat: Fats Domino and the Birth of Rock 'n' Roll...

Ten obscure but splendid '50s rock and roll, R&B and soul recordings - and a mystery "popcorn" classic

Can anyone help? First, please listen to this classic piece of what is now apparently known as "popcorn" from 1959...

In 1959, two 18-year olds, Alan Christian and Joe Zellers, wrote a minor key song called "Lonely Moon" and hawked it around... 

Farewell, Chuck Berry - the rock 'n' roll giant who never seemed to understand just how great he was

Let's get the non-musical stuff out of the way first. Several commentators have bemoaned the general lack of fuss about Charles Edward Anderson Berry's passing at the age of 90, compared to the oodles of coverage devoted to David Bowie and Lou Reed, etc. Racism has been cited as a possible cause of what they claim was a lack of recognition while he was alive, and the muted reaction to his death. That's silly. First, you'd have to be in your late '50s to have been aware of Chuck Berry in his glory days - roughly, 1955-65. Most working journalists (especially in TV or radio), and most of their audience, simply aren't old enough to have experienced anything but the faint echoes of Berry's immense influence on popular music... 

If reincarnation exists, next time round, I'd like to be able to play the guitar like Phil Baugh...or Vince Gill, or Danny Gatton, or...

If reincarnation exists, next time round, I'd like to be able to play the guitar like Phil Baugh...or Vince Gill, or Danny Gatton, or...

That's Phil Baugh in 1965, performing his hit from that year, "Country Guitar". Here he is with Glen Campbell, who, before he became a superstar ballad singer, earned his crust as a top session guitarist:

Pop concerts this real gone daddy would love to have attended

Taunton? Yes, Taunton. Wherever, I bet it was fun (although I might have given Vince Eager a miss). Cochran, 21 at the time, was to die following a car crash in Chippenham two months later...

The Grønmark Blog list of Great Records from 1961

Half of the tracks featured in my previous post were released in 1961. Not one of them would have got anywhere near the pop charts that year, but, just to convey some sense of what a rich year it was for popular music in America - when the US was supposedly waiting for the Brits to come and save its musical butt - here are just some of the Top 100 US chart hits from 1961 (to be clear, these are all, with a handful of exceptions, songs I've given four or five stars to on my iTunes list - so no rubbish ) :

I've found some more obscure rock 'n' roll, R&B and soul classics on YouTube

I'd just returned from the St. Peter's Acton Green Christmas Fair (my wife's papier-mâché birds had all flown off the shelves), made a cup of tea, and settled down for some TV sport and iPadding (I'm strictly dual-screen these days). There was an image of an old single on Pinterest I'd never heard of, so I called up the number on YouTube. Here is Little Ike with the raucous, Little Richard-tastic "She Can Rock" (1959):

Now, where has that been...

From the Vipers to the Kinks: How British rock 'n' roll records caught up with the Americans, 1957-1964

Vince Taylor & His Playboys

Catching up took a while, but that's not surprising, given that rock 'n' roll was a purely American phenomenon, and that, while it boasted its fair share of jazzers and folkers, Britain wasn't exactly awash with performers steeped in the blues, country or bluegrass.

So farewell, George Martin, famed producer of The Vipers Skiffle Group!

But, of course, George Martin is probably better known for his work with...

Isolated music tracks are an absolute delight for obsessives - The Band, Beach Boys, ZZ Top, Stones, Beatles...and Linda McCartney!

Farewell, Cynthia Robinson, the lady who ordered us to "get on up, and dance to the music"

She was the trumpet player whose high-pitched, rasping, trumpet-like voice can be heard at the start of one of the most exciting, energy-charged singles ever released - Sly and the Family Stone's "Dance to the Music" - and who later yells "all the squares - go home!" And she's the "Cynthia on the throne" referred to by band-leader Sly Stone in the song.

The legendary New Orleans musical giant, Allan Toussaint died this week - here are some of his greatest songs

I was going to write about the great New Orleans R&B, soul and funk performer, producer, studio and record-label owner and songwriter Allen Toussaint, who died earlier this week at the age of 77, but there’s a handsome obituary of him available here in the Daily Telegraph (although I should point out that “Mother-in-Law” was a No. 1 US hit in 1961, not 1970, and that “Here Come the Girls was first released in 1970, not 1979). Toussaint was a self-effacing music industry figure the greatness of whose achievements eventually dawned on me one day in the late ‘70s when I realised how many of my all-time favourite records were largely the product of his multi-faceted musical genius. Here are eight beloved tracks written by - and in some cases produced and played on - by the great man, plus two of his finest productions of other people's songs. Prepare for musical magic:

I was thinking of recording "Morning Dew" - then realised the whole of the rest of the world had already done so

The composer

I'll admit that "Morning Dew" isn't exactly up there with "Summertime" (26,000 recordings), "Yesterday" (4000), or "Amazing Grace" (God knows how many!) - but for a modern-era song not written by The Beatles, it's done pretty well. I found 60+ versions during a trawl of YouTube, without breaking sweat. For a number ignored (as far as I can see) by black artists and middle-of-the-road performers alike, it has prospered across a host of genres, including acoustic folk (where it originated), guitar-based pop, psychedelia, folk-rock, hard rock, Gregorian chant, techno-disco and Southern Rock - there's even a death metal version out there (at least, I think that's what it's meant to be - whatever it is, it's bloody horrible).

My favourite songs about sex workers

The story about a hotel in Hull refusing to admit an 18-year old Romanian student because staff thought she was a prostitute surprised me, because every report I saw on the incident used the word “prostitute” rather than “sex worker”. Sky News and the BBC went through a phase of favouring the latter term, which implies that whoring is a perfectly respectable way to earn a living, rather than the old-fashioned, judgmental one. Is this a sign of political correctness finally loosening its suffocating hold on the nation’s throat? Probably not. I’m sure our collective timidity will ensure that the void between, for instance, “coloured people” and “people of colour” will grow ever wider, and that the use of "homosexual" - as opposed to "gay" - will eventually be outlawed altogether.

"Chinese wrestler's jockstrap cooked in chip fat on a greasy day" - and other hippy ditties

It about to get very hot here in London - the temperature could be in the 90s by the end of the week, and the fans (the air circulating devices rather than worshippers) will be blowing up a storm in the Grønmark household. For some odd reason, when the temperature gets that high I tend to start listening to hippy music, which I always associate with summer - perhaps because intense heat renders me less judgmental and allows me to ignore the spectacular goofiness of most of the lyrics. Here's a selection of tracks from the late '60s that will be helping me weather the impending inferno. I'll start with the song which mentions the Chinese wrestler's jockstrap, whose lyrics are definitely a cut above the competition  (although the music isn't) - Roy Harper's "Nobody's Got Any Money in the Summer":

Ennio Morricone, The Yardbirds and Brad Paisley - how Spaghetti Western Music conquered the world

In a way, it all started in 1961, with Italian composer Ennio Morricone's arrangement for this version of a Woody Guthrie song by American folk-singer Peter Tevis (which I heard for the first time this morning):